• TheHottub@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Paycheck to paycheck and your payment is more than you spend on groceries. And your loan has doubled in size because of interest. And will continue to grow. Meanwhile your credit is garbage and you can’t get ahead. Bad credit? Crappy car, needs fixes. Higher interest rate. I’m 41 and trying so hard to get ahead of it.

      At the very least cap the interest for people. Or how about no interest. You can’t chip away at something that’s growing faster than you can swing at it.

      • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Best we can do is crippling debt in a dystopian shitscape to pay off the degree they lied to you about being able to get a good enough job to raise a family because you got that degree, taking on tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

      • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I agree with you here. I’ve always said, if you’re putting in work to get an education, the interest on the loan should be zero. Yes, zero.

        Over time it means the lender (read: govt) loses money, so what. The increased tax income for an educated employee more than accounts for that. Even if it didn’t, what’s the downside to an educated workforce for anyone but those in power?

        Education should not be a for-profit scheme.

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          The government has no problem giving away 0% interest loans, often with principal forgiveness, for tens of millions of dollars to fund infrastructure. How is university not a similar investment in the future?

          • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Yeah, in fact it’s almost trivial to argue that education in something you’re interested in results in better/more efficient infrastructure.

            As an example, California uses loops of wire embedded in the asphalt at lights to sense if cars are there, meaning less delays for people because no light is green at an empty direction of an intersection.

            Though that’s only mildly high tech, some educated electrical engineers had to come up with it, and it makes life better for us all, saving gas, and reduces CO2 for idling cars as well.

    • init
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      10 months ago

      Counter argument–having bad credit is also meaningless if you can never afford to purchase something like a house, and you’re ok with purchasing used vehicles and renting from smaller landlords and not property management companies.

        • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          It’s a far less bad scam than the previous version of be a white guy that’s friends with the local bank.

        • init
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          10 months ago

          Wholeheartedly agree. And then we go around panicking about the authoritarian social credit shit China has. Mfer we’ve have social credit for decades

          • Poxlox@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Respectfully, that is apples to oranges. You are unable to function as a regular person in China with bad social credit. Here you can’t get loans and sometimes your employer sees.

          • guacupado@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Comparing the American president to a cartoon character doesn’t stop you from being able to fly. You have no idea how deep China’s social credit system goes if you think it’s at all comparable to just getting higher interest rates.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      The consequences already suck. It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. At least I can keep (some of) my money this way.